This invention relates generally to ground operations of aircraft, and more specifically, to methods and apparatus for surface movement situation awareness for aircraft on runways and taxiways.
With regard to the safety of aircraft utilizing runways and taxiways at an airport, incursions of such spaces by other aircraft and/or airport support vehicles is a significant safety issue. For example, the darkness of night, weather, and other lower visibility conditions may lead to mistakes by pilots and cause accidents. To further complicate the problems, business aviation pilots and other private aircraft often do not operate within fixed routes, and therefore often operate in unfamiliar airports.
Also, flight crews are susceptible to losing an overall awareness of runway and taxiway positions of their own aircraft when operating in unfamiliar airports. Incidents of aircraft taxiing to closed runways and colliding with construction equipment have been documented. Other problems include near misses and collisions between moving aircraft, taxiing to and taking off from runways not assigned by a flight traffic controller, intrusions onto active runways, and moving onto taxiways without proper clearance from an airport control tower.
Airport maps with detailed runway and taxiway displays are considered very useful by pilots when preparing for a landing and subsequent taxiing at an airport. Such displays provide pilots with a visual aid when approaching a runway or taxiway. However, a typical ground operation map for an airport generally consists of a large numbers of taxiways, text labels, lines, and ground areas designated for different purposes. Such maps sometimes also include structural outlines for the buildings associated with the airports. The effectiveness of such displays are sometimes significantly reduced due to clutter on the screen of the display. Such displays further do not effectively account for a position of the aircraft on the ground with respect to the displayed runways and taxiways.
Audio based solutions, for example, enhanced ground proximity warning systems (EGPWS), provide a certain amount of situational awareness for ground based aircraft operation with audio signals. However, such an approach may be compromised due to communications between pilot and air traffic control and other unexpected audio signals.